
Nicholas Kelly was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an infant and has never been healthy enough to work full time. He was recently hospitalized for 2½ months due to a lung infection, a common complication for the 30,000 Americans with this disease, many of whom are Black and/or Hispanic. Although novel medications have transformed the lives of most people with CF, they don’t work in 10% of patients. “Nobody wants to be hospitalized,” says Kelly, who lives in Willoughby, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. “If something could decrease my symptoms even 10%, I would try it.”/Ken Blaze for KHN